I am often asked what kind of wine should I buy and from where. The answer is quite simple: buy what you like. The bigger question is how do you know what to buy if you are a novice to wines? Here’s a few tips to ease the confusion - many wine stores have weekly or monthly tastings available to the public. These tastings range in price from $5.00 to $30.00 depending on what wines are being poured. If you are fortunate enough to live near a wine growing region, I encourage you to visit different tasting rooms.

Once you have gotten to the tasting here are the basic steps to enhancing your enjoyment of each individual wine.

1. See- Take a look at the color or the wine. Is it deep dark purple, ruby red, clear, golden?

2. Swirl -- Swirling a wine around your glass mixes the wine with the air, releasing the wine's fragrance.

3. Sniff -- Most of what we taste is actually our sense of smell doing double-duty. After swirling the wine, sniff deeply in the bowl of the glass and enjoy the aromas.

4. Sip -- Take a little of the wine into your mouth and swish it around. Concentrate on the flavors, see if you can associate the taste with familiar tastes such as berry, butter, vanilla, oak and tobacco. If you pay attention to your tastebuds, you’ll note many flavors that you would never think to associate with wine.

5. Savor - Simply take a moment to enjoy the wine, in some cases the wine flavors will linger or change with time.

You may also encounter two different glass types while tasting. First is a standard wine glass similar to those you have in your kitchen, the most common of the wine tasting glasses. Second is the Riedel Tasting Glass or "Rolling Glass." The Riedel Tasting Glass serves the same purpose as a standard glass, designed to improve several aspects of evaluating a wine. This is achieved through a hollow stem, which allows measurement of the precise amount of wine poured.

At wine events you will often see large quantities of wine wasted by pouring too much into the glass, often by novice pourers under the false impression that a larger quantity of wine gives the taster more information.

Swirling the wine in the glass enables evaluation of the "nose." Only half the possible surface is reached by the liquid to show aroma intensity is allowed by a conventional wine glass. To maximize the aeration space in the Riedel Tasting Glass, lower the glass gently into a horizontal position. The wine will flow from the hollow stem to fill the bowl just a half inch below the rim. Because of its shape, no wine will spill.

A 360-degree "rolling" rotation will then create a very thin layer of wine on the complete inner surface of the bowl, maximizing the evaporation surface and allowing for detailed olfactory information when you take your sniff.

The larger volume of the Riedel Tasting Glass offers the wine more aeration space, which improves the intensity and complexity of the aromas. The wider mouth of the glass additionally allows the wine to be sipped more comfortably, and avoids tilting the head too far back.

The available quantity of wine in a perfect pour is sufficient for two sips: the first to evaluate the wine and the second to confirm the evaluation.

The distribution of the wine flow is guided mainly to the front part of the tongue, emphasizing the fruit. The delivery to the sides and back of the tongue accentuates acidity and the bitter components, allowing the wine to show all its flavors in a harmonious and balanced way.